Music: Rebirth of Venus

Richard Wagner was determined to make a name for himself in Paris. So
when the Paris Opéra rejected his latest work, Tristan und Isolde,
Wagner dusted off his Tannhäuser, which had been produced in Dresden 16
years earlier, and Frenchified it. He wrote new music for a ballet in
the first scene and reworked the character and music of the love
goddess Venus in his best chromatic, post-Tristan style.

For nearly a century the Paris Tannhäuser remained the most frequently
performed version of the opera. Audiences loved the voluptuous new
bacchanale; sopranos preferred to...